Monday, August 15, 2005
Level 3 of composerly arrival?
So here I am in Lithuania, using the free internet connection at the hotel I'm staying in to post something on Sequenza21.
"What's wrong with him?" You're probably thinking about now. After all, I'm allegedly on vacation, ostensibly for the premiere here of my opera MACHUNAS, which my collaborator Lucio Pozzi and I prefer to describe as a "performance oratorio." So you'd think I'd have something better to do than post to the Seq21 Composer's Forum, right?
Well, actually, turns out it's now late evening and I'm stranded here without any of my luggage. So I've been pathetically hanging out in the lobby to at least obtain the barest essentials (e.g. toothpaste) to last me before I venture out to shop for replacement clothing before the next rehearsal begins at noon tommorrow. But that's not what I wanted to post here about, just the explanation for why I'm at a computer.
But, anyway, while sitting here, it dawned on me that a personal episode I experienced today might trigger some interesting discussion herein.
Thanks to late flights and luggage screw ups cited above, I wound up showing up late for today's rehearsal (which I didn't even know had started before I got there) but all is good because I experienced something I've never experienced before in my life as a composer: I heard my music being performed behind a locked door by people I hadn't met yet. As someone who has vociferously attended virtually every rehearsal of my music and who usually triggers that process in the first place, it was a tipping point moment, a strange sense of arrival on some level.
Many years ago, joking around with other "emerging" composers, we pondered a series of steps to composerly fame...
Level 1. someone else hearing your music besides you
Level 2. someone else playing your music besides you
Level 3. someone else playing your music besides you and you're not there.
Well, today I paradoxically experienced Level 3 which technically is supposed to be something you can't experience. And it was wonderful. So I thought it might make some interesting posting for people to describe their own experiences of hearing their own music unexpectedly.
[Hope this all doesn't sound too self-serving, I really don't intend it that way. I'm just eager to share this moment and hear about similar ones from the rest of the Seq21 gang, and, as I've already confessed, I've got nothing better to do at the moment while I'm waiting for my toothpaste... Oh, it's here now... Goodnight:) ]
FJO
posted by Frank J. Oteri
6:34 PM
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